TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 SCIENCE NEWS


When it comes to reducing energy use, every quadrillion BTUs counts


A bright spot in the nation’s flickering economy is that Americans used less energy last year than in 2008, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which re- cently published its findings online. “Part of the reason is [that] the whole economy shrank,”


said A.J. Simon, an energy analyst at Livermore who calculat- ed that overall energy use in the country dropped from 99.2 quadrillion BTUs in 2008 to 94.6 quadrillion in 2009. “People are doing less stuff overall, using less oil, saving money.” Another reason, Simon added, is that the residential, in- dustrial, commercial and transportation sectors of the econo- my are using more products that are energy-efficient. “People put in [compact fluorescent light bulbs],” Simon said, “and they actually use less electricity, and that change percolates all the way through the energy system.” The data also revealed that people are increasingly relying


on hydropower, geothermal and wind energy, thereby cutting their use of coal, natural gas and petroleum. For the past sev- en or eight years, Simon added, the amount of wind energy used to generate electricity has steadily grown, with a 37 per- cent increase this past year from 0.51 quadrillion BTUs in 2008 to 0.7 quadrillion in 2009. Since the 1970s, the Livermore lab has analyzed statistics provided by the federal Energy Information Administration to create a graphic representation of national energy con- sumption. It shows, for example, that the United States used more than 35 quadrillion BTUs of petroleum last year, the li- on’s share of them as transportation fuel.”“There’s not a lot of magic in putting this together,” Simon said. “The hardest work was done in the 1970s, when people thought of a clever way to visualize this information.” The analysis is not a predictive model of the country’s en-


ergy use, providing only a snapshot of energy consumption for the past year. “That’s the limitation and the strength of the study,” Simon said. “This is a reasonably unbiased presenta- tion of the facts as they are.”


—Leslie Tamura SCIENCE SCAN REALITY TELEVISION


The people behind the titles “THE SECRET LIFE OF SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS,” NOVA This Web-only series, at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/


secretlife/#, features interviews with working scientists who lead double lives. For example, there’s Erika Ebbel, the bio- chemist — and pageant queen. In a two-minute video, an in- terviewer asks Ebbel 10 questions about her twin occupa- tions. Viewers find out that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad and former Miss Massachusetts would rather win the Nobel Prize than be crowned Miss America, prefers heels to flats and thinks that the worst part of com- peting in pageants is the glue she has to use to keep her swimsuit in place. Nova has interviewed about a dozen folks, including a climate scientist who juggles, a geologist who doubles as a Native American dancer and a roboticist who does extreme sports on the side. More videos will be added this month. The video vignettes not only entertain, they hu- manize scientists with intimidating job titles such as astro- physicist. (He seems very down-to-earth when discussing his cosmic tie collection.)


CLIMATOLOGY


The forecast is gloomy “THE WEATHER OF THE FUTURE” (HARPER, $25.99) Using advanced climate models, Heidi Cullen predicts ex- treme weather in her new book, “The Weather of the Future.” Assuming that carbon-emission levels remain the same as they are today, the climatologist predicts what will happen to the Central Valley of California (droughts), Bangladesh (rising sea levels) and South Australia (fires), among other locations. Cullen even foresees Xavier, a Category 4 hurricane, slamming into New York City in 2050. No climate model, no matter how sophisticated, could predict a hurricane that far in advance, so clearly Cullen is taking some creative license to make a point. Oddly, she writes in the past tense to describe future events. For exam- ple: “Residents of South Australia awoke


on the first morning in December 2019 to face yet another sustained warning of catastrophic fire danger.” Only time will confirm or contradict Cullen’s grim outlook.


— Rachel Saslow


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KLMNO THE GREEN LANTERN


Telecommuting is green. Isn’t it?


by Brian Palmer


I’d love to stay home in my paja- mas rather than fight through traffic so I can sit in a cubicle all day. I need help convincing my boss that working from home is a good idea. How much greener is telecommuting than dragging my sorry bones to work? The Lantern has been enjoying the pleasures of telecommuting for years, and its advantages are many — that is, unless you like vehicle ex- haust, tiny workspaces, dress codes and wasting your time. Working from home is a win-win situation for workers and employers. The technology company Cisco recent- ly surveyed 1,992 employees who telecommuted an average of two days per week. The workers report- ed increased productivity and quality of work. The company not- ed that telecommuting increases retention rates. Unfortunately, the environmen- tal benefits aren’t quite as clear. How much carbon dioxide you save, if any, depends on how far you live from work and how you get there, among other things. Let’s consider Mr. Wheeler, the


average American car commuter. According to the American Com- munity Survey, 86 percent of the nation’s workers drive to work, with three-quarters of those going solo. The average commuting dis- tance is 32 miles roundtrip, accord- ing a 2005 poll by ABC News, Time magazine, and The Post. If Mr. Wheeler’s car is in compliance with the EPA’s upcoming 2012 carbon dioxide emissions guidelines, his drive will produce 20.9 pounds of CO2


per day. Mr. Wheeler works


235 days per year, since he takes three weeks of vacation and stays home on all 10 federal holidays, so the annual output of his commute is 4,890 pounds of CO2


The Green Lantern is a weekly


environmental column from Slate. Read previous columns at www.slate.com/greenlantern.


. That’s more


than an electric furnace generates heating the average American home for a year. (A car’s emissions aren’t limited to CO2


, of course: Mr.


Wheeler will also be responsible for nitrogen oxides, carbon monox- ide, and other gaseous and partic- ulate nasties.) Sounds like a huge win for tele- commuting, right? The bleary- eyed walk from bedroom to home office requires no fossil fuels at all. Not so fast. As much as you may hate your workplace, with its detestable poli- tics, stale break-room coffee and interminable small-talk obliga- tions, it’s a more energy-efficient work environment than the aver- age American home. For one thing, that cramped cubicle farm means that less air has to be heated or cooled to keep the worker bees buzzing. Stay home, and you have to climate-control at least your own home office, if not the entire


house. Office workers also share certain equipment, such as print- ers and fax machines. At home, you’re probably running your own peripherals. These inefficiencies can signifi- cantly reduce the carbon savings of working in your pajamas, ac- cording to a 2005 study by Eras- mia Kitou and Arpad Horvath of the University of California at Berkeley. On cold days, an office produces 1.3 pounds of CO2


keep-


ing each worker warm, compared with 11.9 pounds for the average telecommuter. That means Mr. Wheeler’s furnace will give back 10.6 of the 20.9 pounds of carbon he saves by leaving his car in the garage.


(On hot days, the office emits slightly more than 1.3 pounds to cool each worker. Many people have single-room air conditioners to cool only their office, are reluc- tant to turn their AC on, or don’t have an air conditioner. Moreover, in the Lantern’s experience, most office buildings could keep raw salmon steaks fresh during the summer.) Running your own equipment also makes a big difference. At the office, your computer and shared peripherals produce 0.9 pounds of CO2


per day, according to the


Berkeley study, compared with 4.9 pounds for the same gadgets at home. So Mr. Wheeler loses an-


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MICHAEL SLOAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST other 19 percent of his CO2 savings


to his printer and fax machine. There’s more. People who work


at home do a whole bunch of en- ergy-intensive things they prob- ably wouldn’t do if stuck at the of- fice. They take trips to the grocery store, run the dishwasher or even sneak in a little TV-watching. The carbon emissions associated with these extracurriculars can be hard to quantify, but Kitou and Harvath found that rebound effects gener- ate around 6.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per day, another 30 per- cent of Mr. Wheeler’s total. Altogether, on the average day in which heating is required, Mr. Wheeler produces almost exactly the same amount of carbon diox- ide whether he goes to work or stays home. That doesn’t make telecommut- ing a loser, of course. Depending on where Mr. Wheeler lives, there may be very few days in which he actually needs to turn on the heat. On warm days, staying home saves an average of 13.5 pounds of car- bon dioxide. And there are lots of little changes he could make to tip the telecommuting lifestyle in the Earth’s favor, even in the dead of


winter. For example, he could im- prove his home’s insulation (or just wear a sweater in the winter), ditch his personal fax and printer, and stop the midday errands. The scenario is a little different for the 5 percent of Americans who commute to work by train or bus. If they commuted the same distance as Mr. Wheeler, their rides would each generate about 7.1 pounds of CO2


per day, or 1,658


pounds annually. In that case, the inefficiencies of working at home clearly outweigh the transporta- tion savings on cold days. On warm days, it’s better to work at home, and on those that don’t re- quire climate control, it doesn’t really matter whether you go into the office.


If you really want to help the


Earth and you’re not just looking for an excuse to watch “Judge Ju- dy” when you should be working, all of this points to one simple an- swer: Abandon your car first, then worry about whether you’d rather take the bus or stay home.


Is there an environmental quandary that’s been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com.


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